#passive data collection

[josephkravis]

The Age of the Digital Precog: How AI Predicts Our Every Move

Just like the precogs could glimpse future events, AI sifts through enormous amounts of data to make informed guesses about what we’ll do next.

Whats On My Mind Today? Who Are You? How to passively gather personal information is a fascinating look into how businesses, marketers, and tech giants employ techniques to connect your protected data to the information you freely share. Passive information gathering means collecting data about a person without actively seeking it or requiring direct interaction. This can happen through…

[queers4years]

Fellas is it neurotypical to treat large social gatherings as a psychological simulation where you are both the scientist and subject 

[buckets-and-trees]

Big Conversation

Collection: Desperate to Devoted Characters/Pairings: Bucky x Millennial Female!Reader Word Count: 1100 Summary: Life keeps moving forward, and so does the relationship that has completely turned around between you and Bucky, including how that will look now in your shared workplace.

Content/Warnings: fluff, new relationship feels

Author Notes: Week five piece for @buckybarnesevents Hot Bucky Summer - the prompt was "We're..." with friends with benefits, exes, and enemies to lovers as options - and ticking off TEASING to catch up on January for Build-a-Bucky Bingo.

You were so immersed in studying the map and interpreting the data points on your screen with Conor that you didn’t notice the hush that washed over what was a typical hubbub of noise outside your office, or else you might have guessed someone with A Name in the agency had hit the floor.

Instead, it was the decisive knock on your doorframe that brought you out of deep concentration.

When your eyes clocked the Winter Soldier there, a warm smile split across your face. “Sergeant Barnes! Is it already eleven-thirty?” you asked, glancing down at your watch.

“Nearly,” he replied, smiling back, but you noticed it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Eyes that were scrutinizing the man standing just over your shoulder.

“Bucky, this is Conor Sullivan.”

“I’m the director of the digital media analysis team,” Conor said, his Irish accent more pronounced than usual, and instead of straightening, he maintained the stance he’d adopted to look over your shoulder at the screens.

“I’m an Avenger,” Bucky offered.

You bit your lip to keep from giggling.

The posturing energy in the room was painfully palpable.

“We’ve been looking over the latest social media trends, crossing referencing that with reports we’re getting from some of our agents, and the leads Joaquin has been pursuing in Eastern Europe. The activity of the Flag Smashers is absolutely heating up again, and there’s some definite indicators that some potential leaders of the group may be circling in Tirana.”

“I look forward to the briefing – it’s always gratifying when a hunch my team has turns out to have traction,” Bucky’s words were slightly stilted. “Maybe we put something on the books for after lunch. Do you think your findings will be ready by then, Sullivan?”

“More than enough time, Barnes,” Conor responded.

“Even without this analysis mastermind?” Bucky asked, gesturing to you. “We have a date with HR at eleven-thirty.”

“A date?” Conor asked.

“Sorry,” Bucky quickly corrected, “I meant to say meeting.”

You tried to discreetly put your hand to your stomach to hold in the laughter. This was too much.

“We have a meeting with HR to officially disclose our relationship status,” Bucky further explained.

“Oh, I didn’t know,” Conor started, abruptly straightening.

“Of course not, you’re working with one of the most consummate professionals around, she’s never been messy in the workplace.”

“Not true,” you interjected, your cheeks heating slightly. “I used to be fairly passive aggressive and petty towards you.”

“But you did it in a way that you somehow always maddeningly remained above actual reproach,” Bucky said. “We’re one of those classic enemies to lovers romances for the ages. What do they call it now? End game? Like Taylor and Travis.”

You tilted your head, but you did not risk looking at Conor.

“Taylor and Travis?”

“Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce,” Bucky explained. “There was no animosity for them to overcome, but the true love, end game thing.”

“I… should let you get to your meeting, then,” Conor said, some reticence in his tone.

Bucky came further into your office and Conor passed him on the way out.

Bucky squared his shoulders and didn’t relax his intimidating gaze for one second, but Conor was formidable in his own right – only an inch shorter and with maybe twenty pounds less of muscle, the charming, blond, Irish man didn’t pass for someone who you’d expect to work the office side of things in this building.

“You used to date that guy?” Bucky asked two beats after he’d gone, a boyish, smirking grin on his face as he turned back to you.

“Two dates,” you reminded him, “only two dates, and it was more than a year ago.”

“What kind of name is Conor Brady? Could he be more Irish?”

You laughed. “Your names is James.”

“But I go by Bucky,” he countered, reaching out a hand.

You stood and stepped right up to him, twining your fingers with his. “End game?” you changed the line of post-encounter questioning.

Bucky tugged you close with the one hand, and his vibranium hand came up to cup your cheek. “We haven’t said it with those words, but that enemies wave we rode out? The ordeal just outside of Paris? The past six weeks with you since then? Unless you’re not convinced, I’m all in for the long haul.”

You pressed up on your tiptoes and kissed him in a blazing, euphoric heat. He returned the kiss, circling his arm around your waist while still keeping your fingers twined, and pressed your soft body against his chest.

You could kiss this man for an eternity, but you did finally press him away. “End game for me, too.”

“Yeah?”

The smitten smile on his face made you want to close your door and get to much more than kissing. The feelings that shone through his eyes made your heart swell.

“Yeah,” you affirmed and delivered a quick peck.

Everything with him had always been intense, strong, deep feelings. Now that they were rooted in care and affection, it only made you more sure every day since you’d finally broken down the walls and defenses that had been there before.

“That possessive streak looked good on you,” you teased, but he grinned.

“You like knowing you’re my girl?”

“That’s why we’re declaring our intentions to HR,” you said. “Now let’s go make it official, and then maybe I’ll show you in the back of your car just how much I like it.”

“Damn,” Bucky groaned, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead briefly to yours. “I’m holding you to that.”

You kissed him again, just one more time.

Then you giggled.

“What?” Bucky asked, echoing with a half laugh.

“You really said enemies to lovers?”

“You loved it.”

“And Taylor and Travis?”

“You know I was there next to you when you were scrolling through video after video of London night three last weekend and then Dublin this weekend. I’m invested in them now, too. I can appreciate a man who unapologetically loves his woman.”

“Bucky,” you breathed, heart aching and swelling for this man. He smiled and pulled you out of your office, and you followed happily. He was everything, gave you all the shades you’d hoped to find, someone who was proving to be a true other half, and you couldn’t wait for the days and weeks and months and years ahead and all the ways he’d make you laugh, make you melt, and sometimes both at the same time.

NEXT PART: Too Hot

We've come a long way from their start in Desperate, but I just... want them to be in love and happy and get to have fun moments now. I can't help it! 🫠

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[the-butch3r]

could write on the male reader fucked Sebastian Solace after he made a deal when the male reader was short on data/documents on getting a medkit or flashlight

Free Fishsticks?!

Pairing: Sebastian Solace x Male Reader Word Count: 2.4k Content: Porn ahead (MDNI), coerced sex kinda, intersex Sebastian, top reader, Sebastian is down bad as FUCK, i don't really know how this anatomy works or just sex in general but im trying my best (born to jork it forced to research) Summary: Stupidly attempting a run without picking up any data, you get desperate for a medkit. Sebastian offers a deal.

AO3 ver.

Your legs completely ached from the mimic door you just walked into, and your heart probably needed a bandaid for that attack you just had. It wasn’t your fault, you told yourself - the room was dark, courtesy of Froger, and you didn’t have a light source, so you quickly walked into the first door you saw. Painter appeared on the door node and called you a moron, which honestly you were for doing this run, but you flipped him off anyway as soon as you could stand. Yeah, fuck that guy. Both of them. Good People tried to claw at your leg as you fell on your back, and it hurt like a bitch. You were also attacked by a squiddle for using a lantern you picked up earlier, and that ran out (because you wouldn’t admit it, but you weren’t using that sparingly), so you had no light source and were on the literal verge of death. That lantern was actually the only object you picked up this entire run, as you were trying to do some sort of speedrun without searching for data. You had a couple handfuls, maybe 75 research points, but not much. This wasn’t exactly going well, obviously. You were able to dodge Angler a few times, a wall dweller, and Froger just now, but the blacksite was an unforgiving place, and you had sorely fucked up. Your first priority was a medkit. Luckily, the next room you stumbled into was marked ‘52’, which meant that soon you’d run into Sebastian. But you wouldn’t even be able to afford a medkit from him – they were more than double the amount of research you had collected, from what you could remember, and you doubt he liked you – or anyone, for that matter – enough to give you a free medkit. Limping your way into the next few rooms with no hassle, checking behind you cautiously, you walked into door 55. A vent pried itself open in front of you, Sebastian’s voice inviting you in. You took a deep breath, dropping down to your sore knees to crawl into the vent. You’d just get in, grab the keycard, and go. Simple. Darkness was initially the one to be the first you see, but as Sebastian’s light bulb flickered on, your eyes met his. A smile crept up on his face, which you always assumed was inauthentic. “Ah, had a feeling it’d be you. My favourite customer~” Sebastian greeted, his hands clasped together as he gazed down at you with his triad of unsettlingly bright blue eyes, keeping that toothy smile on his face. It almost looked genuine. You ducked your head away and immediately went for the keycard, hobbling on your better leg and then ducking straight into the vents. Sebastian’s voice stopped you midway. “You aren’t even gonna buy anything? Seriously?” His voice lilted, confusion being the undertone to his words. “I’ve got a medkit right here. Buy it.” You hung your head ashamedly, sighing to yourself. “I… don’t have enough data,” You responded, embarrassed. “Really? You didn’t collect any research?” His voice echoed back flatly. “That’s stupid.” Yeah, it sure was. You pulled yourself back inside the shop, sitting against the wall with your head in your hands, rubbing your temples. “Yeah, I know.” You snapped back passive aggressively. “Fuck, I’d do anything for a medkit right now…”You muttered to yourself. You definitely wouldn’t be doing a run like this again. The room went silent for a moment. Honestly, you were just taking a breather, but it seems another metaphorical light bulb grew on his head. “Well. Let me cut you a deal then,” He started, the smile on his face growing even bigger. Your head perked up. A deal, huh? “Like what?” “A medkit… On the house.” The way he said it sounded enticing, but it’s not like you would decline something like that anyway.

You raised your eyebrow, willing to see this through. “In exchange for?” He bit his lip. “Sleeping with me.” “What?” You blurted out, sounding a little more repulsed than you’d like to have. Your eyes widened and you immediately looked up at him in the eyes. His smug ass smile unwavering, he locked eye contact with you, raising a non existent eyebrow. “I don’t think I stuttered.” He stated, giving you a look that made your face heat up and butterflies swarm inside your stomach. 

“Listen, you can’t imagine how pent up I’ve been, alone down here for the past decade. A man has his needs, you know, and you might be one to sate them.” Before you knew it, he was leaning down to your level, smirking expectantly. “Well? It’s just like any other transaction. I doubt you haven’t thought about it before~” He teased, bringing a claw to your face, swooping it behind your ear and down your cheek. You know what? He was right. You agreed embarrassingly fast. You definitely had a thing for the fish guy, and you were gonna stop denying it now. “O-Okay. Yeah. I mean, yes, to the deal, I mean. Sure.” You cursed at yourself internally for stuttering, probably making yourself sound stupid. He chuckled at your eagerness, making you avert your eyes bashfully.

“Good.” He retreated backwards, clearing his throat as you stood up carefully. You both stared at each other for a moment, as if unsure where to go from here, but you were broken from your trance when Sebastian started to unbuckle the clips around his tail and remove the SCRAMBLER from his back. He looked back at you when he noticed you were still staring.

“...Well? Are you gonna just stand there?” He deadpanned, before you gestured to your leg. “I still need a medkit.”

“Oh.” He looked back at your leg, as if he almost forgot you were bleeding out in his shop. He unclipped one from his tail and handed it to you, you giving him a delicate thanks in return. Grateful for the safety of the SCRAMBLER, you shimmied off your diving suit and gear until you were fully naked. You opened up the medkit, relieved that you were finally able to take care of your wounds.

By the time you were done bandaging yourself, Sebastian was stripped of his equipment, awkwardly looking around for a position he could settle himself into. After a few moments of watching him flop around for a bit, he found himself comfortable leaning back against the wall with his tail looping around to support him, a mess of thick curls on the floor.

You stood in front of him, analyzing his alien body. It was littered with scars all over, most from what you assumed were the experiments, a small amount being from the blacksite lockdown, probably. He had gills both on the sides of his torso and his neck, his body a mixture of beautiful shades and patterns of blue. The longer you stared, the more entranced you became. He was honestly so beautiful, more divine than any human you’d ever seen.

“Come here,” He coaxed with a smile, patting his ‘lap’ with his third arm. You obeyed, climbing onto him and straddling his lap with the rest of his tail able to support you. Looking at his genitals, you were a bit shocked by what you saw, but not in a bad way at all. 3 holes – the top one being the most prominent, an opening with something pink and glistening wet just slightly peeking out, the middle one seeming to just be a slit, and the bottom one as what you presumed was his asshole. Interesting anatomy. You did read about his document and him being mixed with specifically female anglerfish DNA, so that must’ve been in the mix with this.

Wordlessly, Sebastian chased a hand down to his crotch, slipping two digits into his top hole and wiggling something out. You watched in bewilderment as he fingered out 2 tentacle-like cocks from his hole.

“There,” He huffed, his cheeks dusted an odd shade of dark blue. “Now we can have some fun.”

He smiled smugly in response to viewing your wide-eyed shock, finding it utterly adorable. “Go on. Indulge, my pet.” He urged, reaching for one of his dicks and stroking it gently, watching for your next move. He shuddered as he touched himself, as if he’d been waiting for this kind of release for a long time, sensitive to the touch. You couldn’t imagine how long it’s been since he’d done anything sexual, let alone with a partner. You figured that might be why he invited (forced) you to spend this with him. Probably.

You swallowed nervously. Spitting on your hand, you decided to make do with what you had, which wasn’t much. Stroking yourself until you could deem yourself slicked up, ready to position yourself against… his slit, you think?

“So, do I, uhm.. Just… In here?-” You sheepishly asked, Sebastian groaning in response, narrowing his eyes. “Just put it in there already.” He growled, motioning his hand wrapped around his cock faster. You raised one of your hands in fake surrender, assuming he might just be really pent up.

Slowly, you slid yourself into his sopping hole, greeted by tepid, tight wetness. Sebastian held in a soft groan as you eased yourself in, staring down at your bodies hungrily. You never thought fish pussy would feel this good, but it did. And you never thought you’d say something like that to yourself, and never will again.

As soon as you bottomed out, you waited a moment to see if he was comfortable with you moving yet or not. Seeing as he didn’t protest, you patiently waited for him to relax. You gingerly stretched your arm out to rest on his chest for more support, feeling the surprisingly soft skin under your palms. It didn’t feel human at all, and that’s secretly what you liked about it. Sebastian noticed your hand, and didn’t say anything about it, quietly leaning his head back as he pleasured himself.

“Move.” He spoke after a short minute, making you obey. Slowly grinding yourself into him, you released quiet sounds of pleasure, resting your other hand on his hip for a better angle. Sebastian tried his best to keep himself as silent as possible, strained groans and soft pants being the only noises coming out of his mouth. You could tell he was holding back. And you didn’t particularly like it.

Attempting to tease a sound out of him, you reached for his untouched dick, closing a hand around it. Man, it was big. Maybe about half the length of your arm. Stroking it gently, experimenting with it, it felt slimy under your fingers, as what you assumed was pre coated itself on your fingers. It was slightly thicker than human pre, for sure. Sebastian’s reaction was slightly delayed, opening his eyes and seeing your hand wrapped around his cock. He shivered from the realization, his light bulb subtly dimming and brightening. Was he doing that the whole time? It was kinda cute.

You decided to speed it up, giving up on sitting awkwardly and instead planting your feet on the ground beside and between his looping tail for more leverage. From here you could properly slap your hips against his hole, despite how uncomfortable it might’ve been, but you were fine with it for now. Plowing yourself into him, you glanced up at Sebastian, focusing on his face for a minute. His cheeks were flush with blue, his lips pulled back in a tight grimace as he tried his best to keep in sound. His eyes were half-lidded, gazing down at where your crotches met.

Listening to the way he wheezed out a few pathetic grunts, you were sick of it and wanted more. You tugged on his dick harder, just in time with your thrusts, dragging them out before ramming back in. It worked. Sebastian threw his head back and moaned, and fuck, you loved it.

“Ngh- Fuck!” He yelled out, his arm reaching to grab onto a table next to you. You smirked to yourself triumphantly.

“Gonna stop being so quiet now?” You coaxed, returning to a slow pace. “Shut up.” He growled back, narrowing his eyes at you. You let go of his dick in response, hearing him softly whine at the absence of your hand.

“Seriously, start making some noise or I’m not gonna fuck you as good as I want to.” You gazed up at him, making eye contact as you watched him consider his words for a few seconds. He finally sighed, leaning back and trying to relax. “Fine.”

As you continued on, you noticed he was still getting comfortable with the prospect of making noise like this, but he was a bit louder for you this time. You eased back into a faster pace, slamming your hips against his hole as he moaned out for you.

“Fuck, that’s good… Keep going~” He breathed out, taking you by surprise, but sexually motivating you entirely. You worked faster for him, listening as he whimpered for you, slightly bucking up his body to meet your hips. Soon enough, he seemed to reach his climax, his bulb flickering for a few seconds as his mind went blank, mouth opening to release an inaudible scream. You pumped your hips harder as you raced to your own release, biting your lip as drool dribbled out from between your lips.

You were faced with the conscience of pulling out for just a second before strong hands grabbed your hips, preventing you from doing so anyway. Hot, white semen flooded into his hole, muffled noises coming from your mouth. You both laid there together, panting heavily as you recovered.

“Fuck… That was-” You huffed out, interrupted by Sebastian manoeuvring you onto your back with ease, putting you on the cold, hard floor. Your eyes widened, taken by surprise when he climbed on top of you, cum still pooling from his hole.

“I never said we were done.” He grumbled, a grin on his face as he mounted you, welcoming your cock back inside. You hissed, still coming down from your refractory period. “Wait, w-what the fu-” Interrupted again by the sensation of him grinding his body into you, a pleasant moan escaping him.

Well, you’d definitely be doing a run like this again.

[drdemonprince]

By now, a majority of Autism researchers and clinicians are aware that the existing assessments for Autism are profoundly flawed. 

They know the standard evaluation of Autism is sexist, with assessors excluding women for reasons like wearing makeup, having a boyfriend, being superficially polite, or not being fixated on suitably ‘masculine’ topics like ancient Roman history or barometric pressure. 

They know Autism evaluations are racist, deeming Black Autistics “oppositionally defiant” or even “borderline” rather than acknowledging any social alienation or sensory pain they’re experiencing, and believing they must be overstating the difficulty they face in moving through the world.

And they certainly know that conventional Autism measures weren’t designed with adult Autistics in mind. Many of us are still asked to make up stories based on paintings of frogs in a toddler’s picture book, when we sit down for assessments at age 20, or 30, or 45 — because all the evaluation methods were written for young kids. 

The data has already proven the far-reaching consequences of using such shoddy measures of Autism. People of color, gender minorities, older adults, and women are diagnosed at later ages, and also go undiagnosed at massive rates. 

A growing population of scientists are admittedly interested in fostering a new literature of what they call “patient-driven” Autism research, but they never stop thinking of us as mere patients, the passive receivers of care rather than the leaders of communities and political movements who are the ought to be the primary authors of the studies about us, and the sole determinants of what our desired outcomes should be. Even when they observe that their work could benefit from a greater Autistic perspective, researchers do so from closed rooms, filled with other professionals who are largely not Autistic, wondering amongst themselves what it is that we want instead of learning to quiet their voices and follow our lead. 

Though many basically well-intentioned Autism researchers believe that Autism assessments need reform, what neurodiversity really needs is to abandon the diagnostic process altogether. If Autism is a benign, neutral, naturally occurring form of human difference that requires acceptance rather than a cure, then there’s no need to diagnose it as if it were a sickness. And if hundreds of thousands of Autistic women, people of color, queer people, and older people have been able to give a voice to ourselves and find one another without having ever been given a label by a professional, then improved professional labeling is not what we need. 

Autistic self-realization is the future of Autism assessment. We hold the collective wisdom, organizing ability, insight, and political power to define who we are. No authority figure should have to sign off on our identities. 

Because psychiatrists fail to diagnose such a large percentage of the Autistic population, many Autism researchers now accept self-identified Autistic adults within their subject pool. Within the peer-reviewed journal Autism in Adulthood, self-realized Autistics often make up the bulk of the participant sample, and they have repeatedly been found to be indistinguishable from their formally diagnosed peers. 

A growing body of research now also considers the presence of Autism-spectrum traits as qualifying for inclusion in many Autism studies. The data makes it quite obvious that Autistic people exist within all human groups, spread all throughout the world, and that a great many people have experiences in common with us who have not been formally diagnosed. This itself reveals that a formal diagnosis is hardly necessary, and that a psychiatric paradigm of accepting self-identification is inevitable. The researchers are increasingly already doing it.

You can read the full essay for free (or have it narrated to you!) at this link.

[foxbirdy]

hi!

just saw your pictures of you doing some marine biology fieldwork and i just wondered if you have any stories about the experience that you would like to share. Im in 1st year uni right now and i have no idea what im gonna specialize in other than “science!!” but i work on boats for my job right now (tallships, very cool stuff) and so marine environment work really appeals to me. If you have the time, I would love to get a picture of what the work you’re doing entails.

(What does the day-to day of marine biology research look like? What kind of stuff are you studying/information are you gathering? Whats it like? Is it awesome? feel free to answer none of these also)

thank you!!

OH, I'm jealous - it's a dream of my mine to get to work on a tallship. & I love to talk about this stuff!

In all honesty, the day-to-day changes pretty dramatically depending on what project work is available. Right now, as a student, a lot of what I'm involved in ties into coursework or research that's happening at the university! I volunteer with a couple different labs, and there's a huge variety of stuff to get in on. For example:

Last Saturday, I spent about six hours pulling otoliths and gonads out of eighty invasive roi, taape, and toau caught by local spearfishermen. Otoliths are the ear bones of fish, and similar to the rings of a tree, they have ringed annuli that can give a lot of information about the life history of the individual species. We cast these otoliths in resin, and then cut cross-sections to look at them under the microscope. The hope is that this information will help us understand when these species become reproductive, and how to control their populations.

The last several Fridays, I've been involved with an effort to collect some water quality and plankton data after a lot of heavy rain. This work was out on the boats, and we used deep and shallow drogues, YSI, light meter, secchi disk, and a couple plankton nets, moving out from the swollen rivermouth and into deeper, saltier water.

Last month, I spent a lot of time on invertebrate snorkel surveys, mostly looking for presence/absence in the nearshore. Next Tuesday, I'll be doing fish surveys in the same location. The Wednesday after I'm hopping on a wetlands restoration project & removing invasive bull grass, and a night snorkel afterwards. Next Friday is a lab day, working to process the plankton samples we've collected, and I'll be in the coral nursery afterwards. That's the really fun thing about university - there's so much different work going on, all the time!

In the summers, outside of school, that work is just as varied. I've really enjoyed having jobs that allow me to do a little bit of everything, and thus far, my supervisors have been very supportive of me in that. Here's some other projects I've gotten to work on, all within just one position:

Servicing passive monitoring systems! These are pictures of my replacing a SEABIRD logger, which has been taking a water temperature measurement every thirty seconds for the past 360 days. This helps conservation managers track heatwaves in sensitive ecosystems. We prepped new loggers with batteries and SD cards and waterproof tape to prevent biofouling, and then used snips and zipties to make the switch.

Scientific fishing! This helps get life history and population data for our target species, large pelagic fish. We collected biopsy samples, placed tags, and released primarily ahi, but also ono, and mahi. (Full disclaimer: this picture is from a subsistence fishing trip and not a scientific one, where people generally have too many things in their hands & are moving too quickly to take pictures. He was a very delicious dinner for our crew, though.)

Other marine tagging! I got to assist with bluewater cetacean tagging of several different dolphin and small whale species, and shark tagging for galapagos, blacktip reef, grey reef, and dusky sharks. Cetacean tagging was done with an air rifle, not easy at high speeds on the boat. Shark tagging was more hands-on, as we had to manually apply the tags.

Coral reef monitoring! The mission of these surveys was to track coral health through heat stress events, and to identify harmful species. I'm looking under the coral head in these pictures for crown-of-thorns starfish, one of the most urgent species threats to reefs in the Pacific.

This is the bastard. Notice the dead coral around him.

Oh I'm about to smack into the photo limit, huh. Please hold!

[takeachillpillshawty]

Very specific TWST head cannons

Jack was accidentally given alcohol by a third year at a party because they thought he was also a third year.

Ruggie would make bets with students if they can guess Jack's age correctly.

Malleus would stay back at after the final class of the day just to sing, he likes the sound of the empty class room. He stopped doing that because a rumor about a "haunted class" was spreading.

Sebek yelled so hard one time, he couldn't talk the next day due to the pain.

Vil watches those self care videos, as in the earwax removal, black head removal, technically any of those gross removal videos. It's a guilty pleasure of his.

Cater is a hot cheeto girl, he and Idia would make ramen and put hot cheetos in it.

Silver is a heavy sleeper...like heavy sleeper. One time a fire broke out in Diasomnia and everyone was screaming. Only after the fire was out did he wake up.

Malleus used to talk to stuff animals as a kid.

Sebek monologues to himself, and everyone can hear him.

Sebek when he was a kid chased another child with a broken ruler for saying Malleus' name in vain.

Riddle and Jamil have this weird friendship, basically it's just them trying to relax but remembering there are idiots who are in the dorms and can't rest until they get things done.

Each dorm has their own WiFi router, Idia usually hacks into the others in case Ignihyde's one is down or he just want to see people's search history.... Let's just say he's not comfortable around certain classmates.

Idia permanently puts Ortho on child lock so people won't ask him to look up not so friendly things on the internet.

Ortho can get sick from viruses or corrupted data he accidentally downloaded.

Jade and Rook have a passive aggressive rivalry. Like imagine them in the botanical garden having lunch and Jade handed him a poison mushroom infused tea and Rook just 'accidentally' pours it in a plant watching it wither. While looking Jade dead in the eyes, both have smiles on there faces, as they passive aggressively try to kill each other.

Cater x Jade or Rook would be so fucking funny. Like imagine dating the most dangerous students in the school but hey at least the dick is crazy.

Trey has a collection of his baby teeth and his siblings baby teeth on his night stand. No-one brings it up...ever.

another reason why Cater doesn't eat sweets is because he'll get a tooth ache just eating a smore.

A student once asked Crewel if it was possible to make 'crack' in potionology..... Crewel wasn't getting paid enough for this.

Crowley has committed tax evasion.

Azul Is thicc. I said what I said, and don't boo me. I'm right.

Ruggie is banned from Monstro Lounge due to finding loop holes in Azul's contracts and getting free stuff.

Malleus hates cake with too much frosting, It defeats the purpose of the cake.

Malleus would use fae circles to teleport prefect to him.

Floyd likes to just bite things, especially his phone case.

Rook takes the best photos.

Sometimes people forget that Vil is an actor and model, so when seeing him in a movie, commercial or magazine they just get jump scared and remembered .

" oh yeah....Housewarden Vil is a celebrity.."

I think prefect is desensitized to meeting famous or high status people that they're not a big deal to them. Imagine Prefect going to a cafe and THE KALIM AL ASIM Is paying for their drink, everyone is shocked that someone who's richer than royalty is paying for you and all you say is " Oh thanks Kalim. "

I feel like up to book 6 every dorm leader helped out in repairing Ramshackle adding there own piece of their dorms in there. A gaming room from Idia, A luxurious bathroom with skin care supplies and designer clothes from Vil, pantry and groceries from Heartslaybul and Scarabia and a cook book from Trey and Jamil respectively. An indoor and outdoor pool from Savannah claw, wallpaper and decor from Azul, and finally furniture and jewelry from Malleus.

[fallen-flier]

as fire loves innocence (rr! sniper tim)

inspired by @yjcorefourenjoyer's sniper! tim idea, who graciously let me run around in their sandbox. :D

beta'd by @pinkcowzz :)

first sniper tim idea here! (not reverse robins tho)

Some extra content cause I wanted to! The Reverse Robins idea ABSOLUTELY got to me...

It grates on Tim. The way Damian looks at him, like he's a piece of gum, stuck to his shoe. Or maybe it just hurts, because Tim is Screech and Damian is supposed to be his older brother or at least something akin to such and Tim has always looked up to the Screech title. He passive-aggressively snipes back and forth with Damian about the problem with his gun for days.

A weak, cowardly weapon.

A deadly force of destruction.

It was laughable, how much Tim is affected by it. He can tell that Damian is trying to keep civil with him, but can't quite distance himself from his strained relationship with Bruce (and by extension, Tim himself) and Damian's disdain for guns. And Tim understands, which might be the worst part. Damian was, from what he can collect from data, trained from birth. An assassin, groomed to the highest order.

In comparison, Tim is just Tim. Sometimes Alvin Draper, now occasionally Screech. Or well, honorary Screech or whatever Bruce deems him, because Tim has yet to earn the title. But it's fine, because Tim earns what he works for, always claws his way out of agony and frustration because it's just what he does. It doesn't matter that his father is in a coma now that his mother is all but confined to a wheelchair, being taken care of in a facility far from Gotham. Tim has to be strong. Be patient.

Do heroes cry, he asks.

There is no response.

++

Except there is.

Tim wakes the morning after his parent's deaths and silently screams, sobs into his hands. It wakes up Bruce, because of course it does. Bruce cradles him in his arms but it doesn't help, doesn't stop the rise of self-loathing and hatred and Tim just wants to snap and break apart. He is not strong or patient. All he feels is shattered. His father's gun didn't save his mom and Tim didn't save them either.

His parents are dead, killed by Captain Boomerang. He was too slow and not good enough. It's funny, it's hilarious. Damian has been telling him that the whole time, but Tim's just too stupid, isn't he?

So what was the point?

What was the point of putting away a gun when all he wants to do is take his father's pistol and shoot a clip into Captain Boomerang's chest or maybe his head until he's dead and gone.

Bruce is going to take Screech away from him. It's an oddly loud thought, floating with the others.

Tim has nothing to do. He's not even fully-fledged as Screech. Just some kid who managed to get lucky and force his way into becoming a ward of Bruce because he deduced Screech's identity. (It was the way Damian's hand always twitched to his side, reaching for a weapon. Tim does that sometimes, when he's scared and all he can feel is the weight of his father's hand on his shoulder and a gun at his hip.)

Just some kid who couldn't even prevent his parents from being killed because he was too busy gallivanting off in the distance, never taking training that seriously.

He was so close to saving them.

It's not your fault, Tim, they murmur.

But nobody's blaming Bruce for taking away your guns when you needed them, are they?

And Tim simply can't. It's too much, the guilt and frustration crawling through his throat, scorching its way through his mouth. Damian's slightly guilty shuffle (which is loud on purpose, because Damian never makes a sound unless it's deliberate) sets him off. Tim is burning and lashing out and everything is spiraling out of control.

He doesn't feel safe, not with Alfred, not with Bruce, not with Damian. He just wants to feel safe and competent and good enough again. 

The whispers follow him. Poor orphaned Timothy Drake. It was so nice of Bruce Wayne to take him in. 

Tim wants to strangle them. 

++

Tim waits until Duke is out of town. Damian, in space. Bruce, engrossed in a case. It's almost terrifyingly easy to slip from Timothy Drake's life into Alvin Draper's. It's far too easy for him to simply disappear.

Timothy Drake lies at the bottom of Gotham harbor, oh-so-unfortunately unrecognizable beyond a few items on his person. Drowned to death after losing unconsciousness and falling into the harbor. Two bullets through his lungs— caught off guard as a civilian.

(Just another drowned, forgotten civvie.)

Meanwhile, Alvin Draper rises from the ashes, burns the last remnants of Timothy Drake from existence.

Paris, he thinks, is a good way to start his career. 

Far enough so that the last vestiges of Timothy Drake are scattered in the winds, smoldering cinders blown out. Far enough so that Alvin can forget the blood on his hands.

You have potential, Lady Shiva says. 

I wish I had more, he does not say. Instead, he drags his fingers across her collection, looks at the flintlock hanging innocently in the middle. He grabs the bō staff instead. 

She looks at him, eyebrows raised.

We will be facing the most dangerous criminals in Asia, she reprimands. Choose again.

He pockets the flintlock, secure against his waist, but holds tightly to the bō staff.

Alvin smirks a little. 

"Hope you don't mind using a favor or two on me," he murmurs.

"My friends are generous," she concedes, a dangerous glint in her eye that says watch yourself.

a/n:

so. had some thoughts about this one. the timeline is definitely really messy haha but the main plot is: tim stalks batman, gets caught by damian -> obeah man incident (mom in wheelchair, dad in coma) -> tim becomes screech (robin but damian's vigilante title) and bruce's ward -> captain boomerang incident -> tim fakes his death

tim, i think in this au, struggles way more with feeling unsafe and incompetent. in this au, his predecessor came, already trained and bruce not needing an emotional crutch. AND tim's parents/ much of his connections to them (aka his father's approval and gun lessons) have been taken from him AND he doesn't really have this mindset where he tries to push back everything so he won't be seen as the angry/ emotional one (aka there's no jason-precautionary-tale hanging behind him)

tim chose the bō staff cause bladed weapons remind him too much of damian, but he'll put some at the end of his staff + start using guns eventually :)

also wanted to ease him into using more lethal weapons cause he's still teetering on the edge. it's a long long fall from here.

[dreamings-free]

It's not just the Black Keys. Why are so many big tours selling poorly? Stereogum | June 11, 2024 | by Zach Schonfeld

long (and US focused) but still quite interesting article on the current state of concert touring, why tours are getting cancelled or downsized, and what's up with ticket pricing. (my selected excerpts/highlights under the cut)

[excerpt, all highlights mine]

[Eric Renner Brown, a senior editor at Billboard] adds, “I do think [The Black Keys] are an artist that can fill those rooms still. I think the demand is there in terms of people who want to see Black Keys. But perhaps at that price point, the demand was not there.”

Ostensibly, agents and promoters should have access to data that can give them a better sense of demand. But they often place outsized importance on raw streaming numbers.

“The data is very confusing,” says the anonymous booking agent. “There’s a lot of passive listeners for data. You can have millions upon millions of streams, but that doesn’t mean it’s gonna turn into tickets. The opposite is, there are some artists who don’t have many streams at all and they can sell like 2,000, 3,000 tickets.”

[..]

It’s worth noting that the Black Keys have released four albums since returning from hiatus in 2019, and toured arenas as recently as 2022. This may be a case of oversaturating the market.

The band’s 2019 and 2022 arena runs weren’t exactly sold out. In between, the band left their longtime manager in 2021, signing with Irving Azoff and Steve Moir at Full Stop Management. Some sources speculate that Azoff, a former CEO of Ticketmaster, may have encouraged ambitious touring plans. On Thursday, Billboard reported that the group has now parted ways with Azoff and Moir. (The management company did not respond to a request for comment.)

“Essentially, you have some very big managers that are out of touch with the granular finesse and nuance of ticketing,” says another anonymous booking agent. “And they have these large expectations and they tell their agents what they want. And the agents are probably texting each other on the side, going, ‘This man is out of his fucking mind.’ But they do it anyway because, in the case of Black Keys, they’re not gonna challenge Irving Azoff.”

[..]

One contributing factor to instability in the touring industry is the rising cost of… well, everything. It’s part of why ticket prices are so high; it’s also part of the reason some acts are backing out of touring commitments.

Bands at all levels have been sounding the alarm about this for years. In 2022, for instance, Animal Collective canceled European tour dates and explained, “We simply could not make a budget for this tour that did not lose money even if everything went as well as it could.”

Industry insiders say that’s not uncommon. “Everything is ridiculously expensive,” says a tour manager who works with major acts and asked not to be named. “There’s not enough gear for everyone to share, so the vendors are having to pay high amounts for equipment. A single bus for a six-week tour can cost $100,000. Multiple that by multiple buses, and then trucks, and then crews are at a minimum, so they’re getting top rate right now because there’s not enough crews.”

COVID, of course, exacerbated this crunch. “What happened after the pandemic is, everyone was ready to tour at once,” the tour manager says. “There’s not enough gear to cover all of that. A lot of bands have had to cancel tours because they don’t have gear or they couldn’t afford the gear,” the tour manager continued. “I was on a tour with somebody last year where we had to book a private jet because there were no buses available. For the first week of the tour, we had to charter planes.”

Acts are thus incentivized to book bigger venues to recoup the costs of touring. The catch-22 is that bigger venues necessitate more elaborate stage production, which makes for a more expensive tour.

“There’s the expectation to have that production,” says the tour manager. “If people went back to having just two trusses of lights and a P.A. and no frills, it was just about the music, they can afford to tour. But everyone wants to see those flashing lights. Everyone wants to see that video.”

“So much of the economics of these big tours is completely invisible to fans and consumers,” says Kevin Erickson, director of Future of Music Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group. “You can sell out a tour and come back in the red if there was a cost overrun or a miscalculation.”

For mid-level acts with sizable followings, these frustrations are compounded by a lack of suitable mid-sized venues.

“For a band that maybe has assessed its demand in the market to be in the 8K range or something for capacity, where are they going to go if that sort of venue doesn’t exist?” says Brown. “And if, say, the local theater that seats 3K or 4K can’t accommodate two or three nights, it can only put them for one night on the tour routing. That’s a real concern.”

[..]

At the end of the day, it all comes back to price. The average ticket price for one of the top 100 tours rose from $91.86 to $122.84 between 2019 and 2023. Concerts are too damn expensive, and there’s a growing sense of consumer frustration with shows that cost as much as airline tickets.

-> read the full article here on Stereogum.com

[askmerriauthor]

I said the game demands microtransactions, not that it requires them. That's not just me being pedantic about wording, but rather a big indication of how the developers designed the game to work. Pokemon Sleep doesn't want you to play for free and is designed to make playing-without-paying a worse experience.

Like many free-to-play games out there, they operate on the idea of monetizing convenience and "fear of missing out" (FOMO). Such games will either create a problem in order to sell you a solution, or rely on a rotating/limited availability of enviable items to encourage impulse buying to avoid losing the chance to have the item. Pokemon Sleep does both of these.

Despite Pokemon Sleep being presented as a passive "something in the background while you sleep" kind of novelty, that's not the actual gameplay at all. The game actually wants you to be extremely active and paying a lot of attention to it non-stop, along with encouraging you to get others involved as well. Up to 500 potential invitations with a 50 individual approval list of contacts, specifically, and the system "helpfully" lets you link to your Google, Apple, or Facebook accounts in order to facilitate that and further scoop up lots of personal data for advertising.

The basic gameplay cycle of Pokemon Sleep is that you have a 7-day period in which you can power up your Snorlax as much as possible, with a higher power score equaling a greater variety of visiting Pokemon for you to catch. Visiting Pokemon will appear in a variety of sleeping types, of which there are at least 415 to collect (with individual Pokemon having multiple sleeping types). These Pokemon can also be "befriended" by giving them a sufficient number of items, which means they'll then join your team and help you boost Snorlax's power score over time. You can further boost Snorlax's score by feeding it, which the game encourages you to do three times per day within a given time window. Your Helper Pokemon will supply you with ingredients to make meals for Snorlax at different intervals, and the meals you make have different potencies based on the ingredients used.

So, to summarize, you have a limited period in which to get a number as big as it can be, with various randomized factors able to improve the rate of progression, before it all resets and you're back to square one.

Yes, you absolutely can play this game without spending any money. But the game itself is designed in a way that urges you to spend money at every turn. Every element of gameplay is improved if you spend money, and will actively degrade in effectiveness and quality if you don't. Remember how you can befriend Pokemon to help you out with getting Snorlax's score up? That's faster and easier if you spend money. Those same Helpers who gather ingredients for you? They lose Energy (an arbitrary limit put in place by the game system) the longer they're around, and become worse at gathering ingredients the less Energy they have. But, good for you! You can just buy more Energy for them! Rather, you have to make two purchases - the Energy-restoring item only gives back 50% of their Energy, so you need to buy two in order to max them out again. And you can just buy a box of random ingredients too! How convenient! And if you really want to get the most out of sleeping, you can buy the monthly auto-renewing (until you manually cancel it through Google or Apple, not the game app itself) Premium Membership! Which literally makes your sleep more valuable than the same - or even higher quality - sleep of people who aren't Premium members! But you better buy fast, because all of these items for sale are on a rotating schedule and will swap out of the shop at different 15 or 30-day intervals. You wouldn't want to miss your chance, would you?

A core facet of microtransaction pricing is that it's intentionally and carefully designed to never be enough. You'll always be in a position where you need to buy just a little more than the minimum, and it always comes out at odd numbers that never fit exactly where they need to in order to maximize your purchase, and are priced in unorthodox values specifically to trick the buyer's brain into thinking it's a better deal than it is. With that in mind, it pays to look at the minimum and maximum amounts the game wants to try and charge you since that gives a good idea of their intended range of interaction with your wallet, and how far a given amount of paid microtransactions will take you. Because, remember, such games are built around the idea of NEVER giving you enough. They ALWAYS want you to be in a state of wanting a little more and being tempted to dish over some more cash for it.

In Pokemon Sleep's case? The minimum buy-in for "Diamonds" - their premium microtransaction currency - is 60 Diamonds for $1.19. Their maximum? 7000 Diamonds for $97.99. So what this says outright is that the game is designed in such a way that it expects 7000 Diamonds to NOT BE ENOUGH to maintain a player's best experience. Because, again, such games will NEVER give you a value sufficient enough to deter the need for further purchases. This is a game that wants players to spend $100 multiple times over throughout the lifespan of their interest in the game. Will the majority of players do this? No. There's absolutely going to be a number of whales who will, especially among influencers and content creators on social media who make their own career off these sort of things. But what Pokemon Sleep is relying on is that there will be a far greater abundance of players who think "Oh, it's just a dollar..." or 'Oh, this item is going away... it's not even $5, so why not?" on a very regular basis.

And I haven't even touched on the overt security/privacy issues and the personal info scraping the app has potential for as well. So, yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and sleep on Pokemon Sleep.

[kidokear]

Spoilers for Murder Drones Ep 8.

What ride! I loved it. ^^

Although, there is this particular line from J that had been stuck in my mind since I watched the episode.

"You know there's no escape, even in death!"

Outstanding delivery aside (seriously, the VA killed it), The line itself (even on a surface level) shows how trapped these drones are, but I'd like to delve deeper here. There is something about it that makes the gears in my head turns and I want to drop the product here.

Here we go.

To start, I'd like to say that, of course, J would know that more than anyone. She died so many times during the show. There is even a J death count in the credit scene. If someone would feel like it's impossible to leave, it would be J because her experience showed her that something as final as death could not break the Solver's hold. (Following this line of thoughts can give us a wealth of information about J and her character! But that's for later)

Now, thinking about it, there are more than one way for the Solver to nullify (heh) death, and I think that makes it even more terrifying and, well, absolute. More so than death. It's not one blockage. There are layers.

For one, we know how difficult it is to kill a Solver afflicted drone. They regenerate so much, so quickly. Even when you take out a crucial part (like the head) or a good chunk of them, they'll come back. And when you do manage to damage them enough to the point that they can't just self-repair, if their core is intact you'll get the 'autorun Solver failsafe' where they'll mutate and turn into eldritch abomination that collect matter until it can repair the host back into the original stat, effectively bring them back to life (and we don't even know the level of awareness the host have during the matter collection process).

Second, even if there is no eldritch phase, they'll still live as a core (like Nori!), a body is not needed.

And if the core is destroyed? Not enough. Because there are backups. J's core was destroyed at the second episode, and oh look! she's back, and seemingly with her memories (on some level) intact from her previous run.

But there is more! Now, this part is mostly speculation and theories, so take it with a grain of salt. But there is a point, after Uzi ate the Solver core where the screen had red in it, and, some says, Doll's name flashed there. Now, I don't think Cyn kept a back up of Doll, and her core was eaten. So what does that mean? I think that could mean that any drone connected to the solver (or maybe eaten by it) would be saved in it's... data base? (not sure what to call it). So even if there is no core, no back up, a drone might not cease to exist and 'die' if it was connected to the solver, even passively. They could forever exist within the Solver itself, which mean that the only way to truly die is to erase the Solver and everything within it completely. which I'm not even sure is possible, considering it's nature of being a 'code mutation' with the possibility of popping up again (although, maybe the end of one strain of Solver could 'free' those within this strain. Or we could have a case of Halo's Flood where even when gone, the new one will carry what the old has, which is honestly horrifying and depressing).

And the patch won't safe you because it keep the primary host out, but not the Solver (and honestly, even if it blocks the Solver itself, I don't think a patch would be effective for long, I think it could pull a flu and mutate to bypass it).

All in all, the Solver is living up to it's name and is being one of my favorite cosmic/existential horrors, not just bending the laws of physics but life itself. A background hopelessness that become more and more prominent once you think about it.

Sorry if that was a mess. Like I said, I just wanted to word vomit my thoughts. XD

[mariacallous]

If you still hold any notion that Google Chrome’s “Incognito mode” is a good way to protect your privacy online, now’s a good time to stop.

Google has agreed to delete “billions of data records” the company collected while users browsed the web using Incognito mode, according to documents filed in federal court in San Francisco on Monday. The agreement, part of a settlement in a class action lawsuit filed in 2020, caps off years of disclosures about Google’s practices that shed light on how much data the tech giant siphons from its users—even when they’re in private-browsing mode.

Under the terms of the settlement, Google must further update the Incognito mode “splash page” that appears anytime you open an Incognito mode Chrome window after previously updating it in January. The Incognito splash page will explicitly state that Google collects data from third-party websites “regardless of which browsing or browser mode you use,” and stipulate that “third-party sites and apps that integrate our services may still share information with Google,” among other changes. Details about Google’s private-browsing data collection must also appear in the company’s privacy policy.

Additionally, some of the data that Google previously collected on Incognito users will be deleted. This includes “private-browsing data” that is “older than nine months” from the date that Google signed the term sheet of the settlement last December, as well as private-browsing data collected throughout December 2023. Certain documents in the case referring to Google's data collection methods remain sealed, however, making it difficult to assess how thorough the deletion process will be.

Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda says in a statement that the company “is happy to delete old technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization.” Castaneda also noted that the company will now pay “zero” dollars as part of the settlement after earlier facing a $5 billion penalty.

Other steps Google must take will include continuing to “block third-party cookies within Incognito mode for five years,” partially redacting IP addresses to prevent re-identification of anonymized user data, and removing certain header information that can currently be used to identify users with Incognito mode active.

The data-deletion portion of the settlement agreement follows preemptive changes to Google’s Incognito mode data collection and the ways it describes what Incognito mode does. For nearly four years, Google has been phasing out third-party cookies, which the company says it plans to completely block by the end of 2024. Google also updated Chrome’s Incognito mode “splash page” in January with weaker language to signify that using Incognito is not “private,” but merely “more private” than not using it.

The settlement's relief is strictly “injunctive,” meaning its central purpose is to put an end to Google activities that the plaintiffs claim are unlawful. The settlement does not rule out any future claims—The Wall Street Journal reports that the plaintiffs’ attorneys had filed at least 50 such lawsuits in California on Monday—though the plaintiffs note that monetary relief in privacy cases is far more difficult to obtain. The important thing, the plaintiffs’ lawyers argue, is effecting changes at Google now that will provide the greatest, immediate benefit to the largest number of users.

Critics of Incognito, a staple of the Chrome browser since 2008, say that, at best, the protections it offers fall flat in the face of the sophisticated commercial surveillance bearing down on most users today; at worst, they say, the feature fills people with a false sense of security, helping companies like Google passively monitor millions of users who've been duped into thinking they're browsing alone.

[allerask]

I think I've FINALLY got it.

I figured out a some-what definitive, sure-fire way to tell if someone is more of a Crowley, or more of an Aziraphale. Better than any B*zzf**d quiz could hope. (Especially for the girlies like me who are a heavily intertwined combo of both.)

So, after watching many reaction videos to the end of S2 E6 (don't judge me, we all cope in our own ways), I've determined that it all comes down one thing. That is, how you react to Crowley saying, "Right... And you told him just where he could stick it then?" etc. Basically, the initial moment of his rejection of Aziraphale.

Reactions I've seen to the scene had a fair number of confused faces at Crowley's response to Aziraphale's offer. Lots of furrowed brows and head tilts. If that was you, congrats! you're an Aziraphale!

"But wait!" you say. "I was just caught up in the moment. The possibility of it... For God's sake! The romance!!!" Umm.. yeah. Exactly.

Now if you, like me, reacted to Aziraphale's offer before Crowley even said anything. Well, I'm sure you already know where this is going. Said reactions include, but are not limited to, eye-rolling, face palming, repeatedly saying the word "no," and/ or yelling "Really?!" at your screen. If this was you... Congrats! You're a Crowley!

"That makes sense, though..." you say. "Why would anyone want to go back to somewhere with people that shunned them?" Too right you are!

Bonus points if you saw people being confused at how Crowley responded, and were then yourself, confused as to how they could be. That's what happened to me, and well, here we are!

If you're still not convinced - Crowley's and Aziraphale's - then think on this: How did you react to Crowley, yet again, pleading for Aziraphale to run away with him?

If you thought it was romantic and "Oh my god, why can't someone ask me that?!" You're Crowley baby!

If you thought it was insane and "Everything they love is here! They can't leave and give up on it!" You're Aziraphale my love.

The crux of the Ineffable Divorce - as said by many - is that these two don't know what the other truly wants. Almost more importantly, though, is that Aziraphale doesn't consider what Crowley would never want. Going back to heaven would be number one on that list. Under no circumstances would that be a thing Crowley would want. Even if it meant having a blessed existence with Aziraphale.

On the other hand, Crowley knowing that Aziraphale would never want to go to hell is supposed to be a give-in. Just as Crowley himself not wanting to go back is a give-in to Aziraphale ("Of course...you're the bad guys"). Crowley doesn't realize that maybe his go-to quick-fix of running away together, though romantic, doesn't actually fix anything for Aziraphale.

No matter what, these characters are (canonically) two halves of a whole. Even as their separate halves they are incredibly complex, and therefore, hard to emotionally pin down without contradiction. Beautifully, much like real people.

Last, but not least, if you don't feel represented in your reaction to Crowley's rejection, I hate to break it to you, but you're Muriel.

You're the passive watcher outside the window, collecting data like a nature documentarian/ officer constable concerned with matters of the heart. And we love you for it!

[grubloved]

(...) proponents of the Man the Hunter theory assumed evolution was acting primarily on men, and women were merely passive beneficiaries of both the meat supply and evolutionary progress.

(...) The modern physiological evidence, along with historical examples, exposes deep flaws in the idea that physical inferiority prevented females from partaking in hunting during our evolutionary past. The evidence from prehistory further undermines this notion.

(...) For those practicing a foraging subsistence strategy in small family groups, flexibility and adaptability are much more important than rigid roles, gendered or otherwise. Individuals get injured or die, and the availability of animal and plant foods changes with the seasons. All group members need to be able to step into any role depending on the situation, whether that role is hunter or breeding partner.

more discussion of the specific evidence in the article -- please give it a read! full text under readmore if you cant get the link to work

The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong

Cara Ocobock, Sarah Lacy

18 - 23 minutes

Even if you're not an anthropologist, you've probably encountered one of this field's most influential notions, known as Man the Hunter. The theory proposes that hunting was a major driver of human evolution and that men carried this activity out to the exclusion of women. It holds that human ancestors had a division of labor, rooted in biological differences between males and females, in which males evolved to hunt and provide and females tended to children and domestic duties. It assumes that males are physically superior to females and that pregnancy and child-rearing reduce or eliminate a female's ability to hunt.

Man the Hunter has dominated the study of human evolution for nearly half a century and pervaded popular culture. It is represented in museum dioramas and textbook figures, Saturday morning cartoons and feature films. The thing is, it's wrong.

Mounting evidence from exercise science indicates that women are physiologically better suited than men to endurance efforts such as running marathons. This advantage bears on questions about hunting because a prominent hypothesis contends that early humans are thought to have pursued prey on foot over long distances until the animals were exhausted. Furthermore, the fossil and archaeological records, as well as ethnographic studies of modern-day hunter-gatherers, indicate that women have a long history of hunting game. We still have much to learn about female athletic performance and the lives of prehistoric women. Nevertheless, the data we do have signal that it is time to bury Man the Hunter for good.

The theory rose to prominence in 1968, when anthropologists Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore published Man the Hunter, an edited collection of scholarly papers presented at a 1966 symposium on contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. The volume drew on ethnographic, archaeological and paleoanthropological evidence to argue that hunting is what drove human evolution and resulted in our suite of unique features. "Man's life as a hunter supplied all the other ingredients for achieving civilization: the genetic variability, the inventiveness, the systems of vocal communication, the coordination of social life," anthropologist William S. Laughlin writes in chapter 33 of the book. Because men were supposedly the ones hunting, proponents of the Man the Hunter theory assumed evolution was acting primarily on men, and women were merely passive beneficiaries of both the meat supply and evolutionary progress.

But Man the Hunter's contributors often ignored evidence, sometimes in their own data, that countered their suppositions. For example, Hitoshi Watanabe focused on ethnographic data about the Ainu, an Indigenous population in northern Japan and its surrounding areas. Although Watanabe documented Ainu women hunting, often with the aid of dogs, he dismissed this finding in his interpretations and placed the focus squarely on men as the primary meat winners. He was superimposing the idea of male superiority through hunting onto the Ainu and into the past.

This fixation on male superiority was a sign of the times not just in academia but in society at large. In 1967, the year between the Man the Hunter conference and the publication of the edited volume, 20-year-old Kathrine Switzer entered the Boston Marathon under the name "K. V. Switzer," which obscured her gender. There were no official rules against women entering the race; it just was not done. When officials discovered that Switzer was a woman, race manager Jock Semple attempted to push her physically off the course.

At that time, the conventional wisdom was that women were incapable of completing such a physically demanding task and that attempting to do so could harm their precious reproductive capacities. Scholars following Man the Hunter dogma relied on this belief in women's limited physical capacities and the assumed burden of pregnancy and lactation to argue that only men hunted. Women had children to rear instead.

Today these biased assumptions persist in both the scientific literature and the public consciousness. Granted, women have recently been shown hunting in movies such as Prey, the newest installment of the popular Predator franchise, and on cable programs such as Naked and Afraid and Women Who Hunt. But social media trolls have viciously critiqued and labeled these depictions as part of a politically correct feminist agenda. They insist the creators of such works are trying to rewrite gender roles and evolutionary history in an attempt to co-opt "traditionally masculine" social spheres. Bystanders might be left wondering whether portrayals of women hunters are trying to make the past more inclusive than it really was—or whether Man the Hunter-style assumptions about the past are attempts to project sexism backward in time. Our recent surveys of the physiological and archaeological evidence for hunting capability and sexual division of labor in human evolution answer this question.

Credit: Violet Isabelle Frances for Bryan Christie Design

Before getting into the evidence, we need to first talk about sex and gender. "Sex" typically refers to biological sex, which can be defined by myriad characteristics such as chromosomes, hormone levels, gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. The terms "female" and "male" are often used in relation to biological sex. "Gender" refers to how an individual identifies—woman, man, nonbinary, and so forth. Much of the scientific literature confuses and conflates female/male and woman/man terminology without providing definitions to clarify what it is referring to and why those terms were chosen. For the purpose of describing anatomical and physiological evidence, most of the literature uses "female" and "male," so we use those words here when discussing the results of such studies. For ethnographic and archaeological evidence, we are attempting to reconstruct social roles, for which the terms "woman" and "man" are usually used. Unfortunately, both these word sets assume a binary, which does not exist biologically, psychologically or socially. Sex and gender both exist as a spectrum, but it is difficult to add that nuance when citing the work of others.

It also bears mentioning that much of the research into exercise physiology, paleoanthropology, archaeology and ethnography has historically been conducted by men and focused on males. For example, Ella Smith of the Australian Catholic University and her colleagues found that in studies of nutrition and supplements, only 23 percent of participants were female. Emma Cowley, then at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her colleagues found that among published studies focusing on athletic performance, only 6 percent had female-only participants; 31 percent looked exclusively at males. This massive disparity means we still know very little about female athletic performance, training and nutrition, leaving athletic trainers and coaches to treat females mostly as small males. It also means that much of the work we have to rely on to make our physiological arguments about female hunters in prehistory is based on research with small human sample sizes or rodent studies. We hope this state of affairs will inspire the next generation of scientists to ensure that females are represented in such studies. But even with the limited data available to us, we can show that Man the Hunter is a flawed theory and make the case that females in early human communities hunted, too.

From a biological standpoint, there are undeniable differences between females and males. When we discuss these differences, we are typically referring to means, averages of one group compared with another. Means obscure the vast range of variation in humans. For instance, although males tend to be larger and to have bigger hearts and lungs and more muscle mass, there are plenty of females who fall within the typical male range; the inverse is also true.

Overall, females are metabolically better suited for endurance activities, whereas males excel at short, powerful burst-type activities. You can think of it as marathoners (females) versus powerlifters (males). Much of this difference seems to be driven by the powers of the hormone estrogen.

Credit: Violet Isabelle Frances for Bryan Christie Design

Given the fitness world's persistent touting of the hormone testosterone for athletic success, you'd be forgiven for not knowing that estrogen, which females typically produce more of than males, plays an incredibly important role in athletic performance. It makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, however. The estrogen receptor—the protein that estrogen binds to in order to do its work—is deeply ancient. Joseph Thornton of the University of Chicago and his colleagues have estimated that it is around 1.2 billion to 600 million years old—roughly twice as old as the testosterone receptor. In addition to helping regulate the reproductive system, estrogen influences fine-motor control and memory, enhances the growth and development of neurons, and helps to prevent hardening of the arteries.

Important for the purposes of this discussion, estrogen also improves fat metabolism. During exercise, estrogen seems to encourage the body to use stored fat for energy before stored carbohydrates. Fat contains more calories per gram than carbohydrates do, so it burns more slowly, which can delay fatigue during endurance activity. Not only does estrogen encourage fat burning, but it also promotes greater fat storage within muscles—marbling if you will—which makes that fat's energy more readily available. Adiponectin, another hormone that is typically present in higher amounts in females than in males, further enhances fat metabolism while sparing carbohydrates for future use, and it protects muscle from breakdown. Anne Friedlander of Stanford University and her colleagues found that females use as much as 70 percent more fat for energy during exercise than males.

Correspondingly, the muscle fibers of females differ from those of males. Females have more type I, or "slow-twitch," muscle fibers than males do. These fibers generate energy slowly by using fat. They are not all that powerful, but they take a long time to become fatigued. They are the endurance muscle fibers. Males, in contrast, typically have more type II ("fast-twitch") fibers, which use carbohydrates to provide quick energy and a great deal of power but tire rapidly.

Females also tend to have a greater number of estrogen receptors on their skeletal muscles compared with males. This arrangement makes these muscles more sensitive to estrogen, including to its protective effect after physical activity. Estrogen's ability to increase fat metabolism and regulate the body's response to the hormone insulin can help prevent muscle breakdown during intense exercise. Furthermore, estrogen appears to have a stabilizing effect on cell membranes that might otherwise rupture from acute stress brought on by heat and exercise. Ruptured cells release enzymes called creatine kinases, which can damage tissues.

Studies of females and males during and after exercise bolster these claims. Linda Lamont of the University of Rhode Island and her colleagues, as well as Michael Riddell of York University in Canada and his colleagues, found that females experienced less muscle breakdown than males after the same bouts of exercise. Tellingly, in a separate study, Mazen J. Hamadeh of York University and his colleagues found that males supplemented with estrogen suffered less muscle breakdown during cycling than those who didn't receive estrogen supplements. In a similar vein, research led by Ron Maughan of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland found that females were able to perform significantly more weight-lifting repetitions than males at the same percentages of their maximal strength.

If females are better able to use fat for sustained energy and keep their muscles in better condition during exercise, then they should be able to run greater distances with less fatigue relative to males. In fact, an analysis of marathons carried out by Robert Deaner of Grand Valley State University demonstrated that females tend to slow down less as a race progresses compared with males.

If you follow long-distance races, you might be thinking, wait—males are outperforming females in endurance events! But this is only sometimes the case. Females are more regularly dominating ultraendurance events such as the more than 260-mile Montane Spine foot race through England and Scotland, the 21-mile swim across the English Channel and the 4,300-mile Trans Am cycling race across the U.S. Sometimes female athletes compete in these races while attending to the needs of their children. In 2018 English runner Sophie Power ran the 105-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc race in the Alps while still breastfeeding her three-month-old at rest stations.

Inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports. As an example, some endurance-running events allow the use of professional runners called pacesetters to help competitors perform their best. Men are not permitted to act as pacesetters in many women's events because of the belief that they will make the women "artificially faster," as though women were not actually doing the running themselves.

The modern physiological evidence, along with historical examples, exposes deep flaws in the idea that physical inferiority prevented females from partaking in hunting during our evolutionary past. The evidence from prehistory further undermines this notion.

Consider the skeletal remains of ancient people. Differences in body size between females and males of a species, a phenomenon called sexual size dimorphism, correlate with social structure. In species with pronounced size dimorphism, larger males compete with one another for access to females, and among the great apes larger males socially dominate females. Low sexual size dimorphism is characteristic of egalitarian and monogamous species. Modern humans have low sexual size dimorphism compared with the other great apes. The same goes for human ancestors spanning the past two million years, suggesting that the social structure of humans changed from that of our chimpanzeelike ancestors.

Sophie Power ran the 105-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc race in the Alps while breastfeeding her child at rest stations. Credit: Alexis Berg

Anthropologists also look at damage on our ancestors' skeletons for clues to their behavior. Neandertals are the best-studied extinct members of the human family because we have a rich fossil record of their remains. Neandertal females and males do not differ in their trauma patterns, nor do they exhibit sex differences in pathology from repetitive actions. Their skeletons show the same patterns of wear and tear. This finding suggests that they were doing the same things, from ambush-hunting large game animals to processing hides for leather. Yes, Neandertal women were spearing woolly rhinoceroses, and Neandertal men were making clothing.

Males living in the Upper Paleolithic—the cultural period between roughly 45,000 and 10,000 years ago, when early modern humans entered Europe—do show higher rates of a set of injuries to the right elbow region known as thrower's elbow, which could mean they were more likely than females to throw spears. But it does not mean women were not hunting, because this period is also when people invented the bow and arrow, hunting nets and fishing hooks. These more sophisticated tools enabled humans to catch a wider variety of animals; they were also easier on hunters' bodies. Women may have favored hunting tactics that took advantage of these new technologies.

What is more, females and males were buried in the same way in the Upper Paleolithic. Their bodies were interred with the same kinds of artifacts, or grave goods, suggesting that the groups they lived in did not have social hierarchies based on sex.

Ancient DNA provides additional clues about social structure and potential gender roles in ancestral human communities. Patterns of variation in the Y chromosome, which is paternally inherited, and in mitochondrial DNA, which is maternally inherited, can reveal differences in how males and females dispersed after reaching maturity. Thanks to analyses of DNA extracted from fossils, we now know of three Neandertal groups that engaged in patrilocality—wherein males were more likely to stay in the group they were born into and females moved to other groups—although we do not know how widespread this practice was.

Patrilocality is believed to have been an attempt to avoid incest by trading potential mates with other groups. Nevertheless, many Neandertals show both genetic and anatomical evidence of repeated inbreeding in their ancestry. They lived in small, nomadic groups with low population densities and endured frequent local extinctions, which produced much lower levels of genetic diversity than we see in living humans. This is probably why we don't see any evidence in their skeletons of sex-based differences in behavior.

For those practicing a foraging subsistence strategy in small family groups, flexibility and adaptability are much more important than rigid roles, gendered or otherwise. Individuals get injured or die, and the availability of animal and plant foods changes with the seasons. All group members need to be able to step into any role depending on the situation, whether that role is hunter or breeding partner.

Observations of recent and contemporary foraging societies provide direct evidence of women participating in hunting. The most cited examples come from the Agta people of the Philippines. Agta women hunt while menstruating, pregnant and breastfeeding, and they have the same hunting success as Agta men.

They are hardly alone. A recent study of ethnographic data spanning the past 100 years—much of which was ignored by Man the Hunter contributors—found that women from a wide range of cultures hunt animals for food. Abigail Anderson and Cara Wall-Scheffler, both then at Seattle Pacific University, and their colleagues reported that 79 percent of the 63 foraging societies with clear descriptions of their hunting strategies feature women hunters. The women participate in hunting regardless of their childbearing status. These findings directly challenge the Man the Hunter assumption that women's bodies and childcare responsibilities limit their efforts to gathering foods that cannot run away.

So much about female exercise physiology and the lives of prehistoric women remains to be discovered. But the idea that in the past men were hunters and women were not is absolutely unsupported by the limited evidence we have. Female physiology is optimized for exactly the kinds of endurance activities involved in procuring game animals for food. And ancient women and men appear to have engaged in the same foraging activities rather than upholding a sex-based division of labor. It was the arrival some 10,000 years ago of agriculture, with its intensive investment in land, population growth and resultant clumped resources, that led to rigid gendered roles and economic inequality.

Now when you think of "cave people," we hope, you will imagine a mixed-sex group of hunters encircling an errant reindeer or knapping stone tools together rather than a heavy-browed man with a club over one shoulder and a trailing bride. Hunting may have been remade as a masculine activity in recent times, but for most of human history, it belonged to everyone.

[wazzappp]

So. What if Jaime had chemoreceptors on spots his armor? I have four potential explanations/reasons.

One: the less creepy version: certain types of bugs taste with their feet, etc. Not beetles, but they do. They can land on things and identify whether or not they’re food that way. So, fingertips and or balls of his feet have the ability to taste.

Two: the raptorial version. The forearm blades/upper forelegs are raptorial. If he’s fighting/hunting, he might wanna be able to sense if this is food or not, once he sticks his blades in. So taste receptors on the blades. Possibly little pores like ampullae of lorenzini (detects electrical impulses, so might help with finding muscles to cut to incapacitate prey), or thermal pits like vipers (to help locate large veins to slice.)

Three: antenna version.

The upper forelimbs kinda look like antenna, could give them sensory function (in suit). Maybe sensitive to pressure on the tips, with chemoreceptors clustered on the tip (active investigation, like he’s poking at a thing) and trailing in a rough line down the limb towards his main body (passive investigation, like the wind blows a smell to him)

Four: scout version. The scarab is an infiltrator, part of infiltrating is collecting data, so the armor must have a whole fuck-ton of sensors on it, so the scarab can get lots of data to send to Reach. Khaj isn’t interested in the reach, but that doesn’t change what it was designed for. So lots of sensors everywhere, with taste/smell receptors clustered on the ends of limbs (feet, hands, blades)

Thank you, have a nice day!

Hey. Hi. Not to be dramatic but I’m going to marry you now. This is not a request. Put the ring on

Hoooooooooly fuck I love the Ampullae of Lorenzini idea so much. I know there aren’t really insects that have them (as far as I know) but I don’t fucking care they’re SO COOL. The gel inside ampullengang might need to change because it’s meant to detect electromagnetic fields underwater but that’s like. The only real issue here.

Fuckkkk you could have so much fun with behavioral shit too. Movement might cause his mantis blades to try and lash out to attack whatever’s triggering them. In battle this could help with quick instinctive attacks that might not be possible if he was doing it consciously. BAD news is that means he has to get a grip on them real fucking quick so he doesent hurt anyone on accident. OHHHH MY GOD WHICH WOULD MAKE DUCK-TAPING THEM DOWN IN MY LAST LIL AU BLURB EVEN MORE FUN LETS FUCKING GOOOOOO.

Oh god accidentally hurting a family member. His worst fucking nightmare. Delicious. I am drinking that shit like lemonade.

Yes I added his little clawsies in the diagram you can fit SO many knives on this boy.

THERMAL!! PITS!! Holy fuck I did not know there were beetles that have these but there ARE. They’re called fire chaser beetles and they can sense fires from MILES away and holy fuck I love them. Their sensilla (sorry for spelling it wrong in the drawing lmao) are stored in the thorax and are infrared receptors. These contain liquid which expand in response to the infrared radiation, and touch a nerve, which tells the beetle where heat is coming from.

For Jaime this would be weird as FUCK. It’s more just a sense of 'HEAT WHEREMST’ than infrared vision. It is nice for telling his mom when she forgot to turn off the oven though.

[notwiselybuttoowell]

The Natural History Museum in London has announced a major programme of transformation it says will mark “a step-change from being a catalogue of natural history to a catalyst for change” in response to the climate emergency.

The scheme to renovate the museum’s celebrated Victorian building and develop a new research and storage facility will build on its aim to turn visitors into “advocates for the planet"

Four existing galleries will be overhauled, including its enormously popular dinosaur gallery, while the museum plans to reopen two long-closed exhibition spaces, one of which, the Old General Herbarium, has not been accessible to the public since 1948.

One of them will house a new permanent exhibition that the museum’s director, Doug Gurr, said would include the most explicit climate messaging it had ever offered. The exhibition, Fixing Our Broken Planet, will have the express aim of “nudging” visitors to change their behaviour, he said.

The new exhibition spaces will be freed up by the creation of a purpose-built storage, research and digitisation centre at Thames Valley Science Park near Reading, to which more than a third of the museum’s enormous natural history collection will be moved from its “unsuitable, unsustainable” current home.

The museum said this was “so we can take better care of it and more easily share its data with scientists all over the world who are finding solutions to problems like climate change, biodiversity loss and food security.”

Until recently, Gurr told the Guardian, the museum had seen itself as a “passive observer … our job was to collect, to conserve, to research, to display”.

“[Then] we stepped back a bit and said: ‘Well, hang on, if your subject matter is planet Earth and it’s under that much threat, you’ve got to do something about it. If you want the sporting analogy: how do you get off the sidelines and get on the pitch?”

In 2020 the museum declared a planetary emergency, and Gurr said the redevelopment was part of its continuing response. “The best contribution we can make is to create what we call ‘advocates for the planet’. And what that really means is: how do you inspire people at scale to care about nature and to care enough to want to do something about it?

“Of course, we still want people to have a brilliant, fun family day out. But if you can come out of that being a little bit more interested in nature and a little bit more aware of some of the challenges, you’re a bit more likely to want to do something about it.”

The overhaul of the South Kensington site is due to be completed in time for the museum’s 150th anniversary in 2031. The bulk of the funding will come from the government, which has already committed more than £200m to the new collections and research centre, while a further £155m will fund a museum-led programme to digitise natural science collections in the UK. In addition, the museum announced plans to raise £150m from philanthropic and commercial sponsors.

Gurr said the museum was happy to “talk to everybody” about potential sources of sponsorship but would not accept donations from firms it saw as unacceptable partners based on their climate record. “We are very, very clear that when we talk to [a potential sponsor], we’re going to look at the actual behaviour versus the statements,” he said.

Gurr said the museum had turned down “significant” sums in the past “where we just felt it wouldn’t be appropriate to accept at this point, because we’re acutely aware that you can’t go around asking people to change behaviour and save the planet if you’re then hypocritical in some of the gifts you accept”.

He would not be drawn on the position taken by other institutions such as the Science Museum and the British Museum, both of which have highly controversial funding relationships with energy firms, but he said: “It is factual that we have not accepted any funding from fossil fuel companies.”

The museum recently redeveloped its outdoor space into two new gardens focusing on evolution and biodiversity, and Gurr said it hoped to expand its education programme, encouraging schools to exploit their own outdoor space and enhance their climate and nature teaching.